Dale Ahlquist > Quotes

“He seems so frivolous and so careless, but he gives money to beggars, not frivolously or carelessly, but because he believes in giving money to beggars, and giving it to them “where they stand”.

He says he knows perfectly well all the arguments against giving money to beggars. But he finds those to be precisely the arguments for giving money to them. If beggars are lazy or deceptive or wanting a drink, he knows only too well his own lack of motivation, his own dishonesty, his own thirst.

He doesn’t believe in “scientific charity” because that is too easy, as easy as writing a check. He believes in “promiscuous charity” because that is really difficult. “It means the most dark and terrible of all human actions—talking to a man. In fact, I know of nothing more difficult than really talking to the poor men we meet.” (pp. 13-14)”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.” It”
― Dale Ahlquist, G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense

“It is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The problem is this. We worship the new instead of the eternal. And when we worship the new, we are always changing our allegiances, because there will always be something newer. Look”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“so democracy means more than just going to vote. Democracy means that people should truly have the opportunity to govern their own affairs. The”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes being corrected.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“Why should your conscience be any more reliable than your rotting teeth or your quite special defect of eyesight?”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Apostle of Common Sense

“The snobs of the world avoid words of one syllable because they avoid common sense, plain words, clear thinking. They prefer long words, which are a substitute for thinking.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Apostle of Common Sense

“Politicians now think they have to educate the electorate and explain to them what is good for them. Gone are the days when the electorate educated their representatives .”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Someone who doesn’t know history, he says, is “in the literal sense half-witted . . . He does not know what half his own words mean, or what half his own actions signify.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Every leader-writer who thunders ‘Galileo’ at us assumes that we know even less about Galileo than he does.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“You can say anything against a man who praises himself, but a man who blames himself is invulnerable.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“All proof begins with something which cannot be proved, but can only be perceived or accepted, and is called an axiom or first principle.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Apostle of Common Sense

“When he traveled, he was writing. When he was at the pub, he was writing. He would stop in the middle of a staircase or a crowded street to write. When he ran out of paper, he would write on his shirt cuffs. He was always writing. He was one of the most prolific writers who ever lived. A hundred books, thousands of essays, hundreds of poems.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Knight of the Holy Ghost: A Short History of G. K. Chesterton

“understanding the facts is more important than knowing the facts. But”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common sense.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“The two first facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous. . . . [A]ll”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“when I say that children should be taught to think I do not mean (like many moderns) that they should be taught to doubt; for the two processes are not only not the same, but are in many ways opposite. To doubt is only to destroy; to think is to create.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“The moderns say that they are leaving the past, because it is exhausted; but they lie. They are escaping from the past because it is so strong.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“In our existing political conditions, when everybody agrees about something, it is generally untrue.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“   Everyone’s belief is everyone else’s concern.24    Those who talk of “tolerating all opinions” are very provincial bigots who are only familiar with one opinion.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton

“The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself. Other institutions must largely be made for him by strangers, whether the institutions be despotic or democratic. There is no other way of organizing mankind which can give this power and dignity, not only to mankind but to men.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Story of the Family: G. K. Chesterton on the Only State that Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens

“whenever he hears a man say that life is not worth living, he takes out the gun and offers to shoot him. “Always with the most satisfactory results”, he laughs.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The Story of the Family”. His first three points: The family is the most ancient of human institutions. It has an authority. It is universal.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Story of the Family: G. K. Chesterton on the Only State that Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens

“something that is in the very nature of nature-worship. We can already see men becoming unhealthy by the worship of health; becoming hateful by the worship of love; becoming paradoxically solemn and overstrained even by the idolatry of sport; and in some cases strangely morbid and infected with horrors by the perversion of a just sympathy with animals. . . . There”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Apostle of Common Sense

“Materialism is really our established church; for the Government will really help it to persecute the heretics.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Chesterton says that thinking is the hardest work in the world. And hard work, he says, is repugnant to our nature.”
― Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton